我的生活海伦凯勒摘抄 海伦·凯勒自传《我的生活》第14期

海伦·凯勒自传《我的生活》第14期  

Chapter VII
The next important step in my education was learning to read.
As soon as I could spell a few words my teacher gave me slips of cardboard on which were printed words in raised letters. I quickly learned that each printed word stood for an object
an act
or a quality. I had a frame in which I could arrange the words in little sentences; but before I ever put sentences in the frame I used to make them in objects. I found the slips of paper which represented
for example
"doll
" "is
" "on
" "bed" and placed each name on its object; then I put my doll on the bed with the words is
on
bed arranged beside the doll
thus making a sentence of the words
and at the same time carrying out the idea of the sentence with the things themselves.
每当我拼写单词的时候，我的老师就会拿给我一些卡片，这些卡片上面印着凸起的字母。我学得很快，我知道每一个词语都代表着一种物体，一种行为，或者是一种特质。我有一个拼写板，最初，我能在上面拼凑出一些短句。我发现了那些卡片所代表的含义，比如“doll”，“is”，“on”，“bed”这几个词，每一个词都有其自身对应的物体和形式。于是，我就用“is on bed”表示把洋娃娃放在牀上。在造句的同时，我也掌握了句子本身的意义和结构。
One day
Miss Sullivan tells me
I pinned the word girl on my pinafore and stood in the wardrobe. On the shelf I arranged the words
is
in
wardrobe. Nothing delighted me so much as this game. My teacher and I played it for hours at a time. Often everything in the room was arranged in object sentences.
From the printed slip it was but a step to the printed book. I took my "Reader for Beginners" and hunted for the words I knew; when I found them my joy was like that of a game of hide-and-seek. Thus I began to read. Of the time when I began to read connected stories I shall speak later.
For a long time I had no regular lessons. Even when I studied most earnestly it seemed more like play than work. Everything Miss Sullivan taught me she illustrated by a beautiful story or a poem. Whenever anything delighted or interested me she talked it over with me just as if she were a little girl herself. What many children think of with dread
as a painful plodding through grammar
hard sums and harder definitions
is to-day one of my most precious memories.
I cannot explain the peculiar sympathy Miss Sullivan had with my pleasures and desires. Perhaps it was the result of long association with the blind. Added to this she had a wonderful faculty for description. She went quickly over uninteresting details
and never nagged me with questions to see if I remembered the day-before-yesterday's lesson. She introduced dry technicalities of science little by little
making every subject so real that I could not help remembering what she taught.
We read and studied out of doors
preferring the sunlit woods to the house. All my early lessons have in them the breath of the woods—the fine
resinous odour of pine needles
blended with the perfume of wild grapes. Seated in the gracious shade of a wild tulip tree
I learned to think that everything has a lesson and a suggestion. "The loveliness of things taught me all their use." Indeed
everything that could hum
or buzz
or sing
or bloom had a part in my education—noisy-throated frogs
katydids and crickets held in my hand until
fetting their embarrassment
they trilled their reedy note
little downy chickens and wildflowers
the dogwood blossoms
meadow-violets and budding fruit trees. I felt the bursting cotton-bolls and fingered their soft fiber and fuzzy seeds; I felt the low soughing of the wind through the cornstalks
the silky rustling of the long leaves
and the indignant snort of my pony
as we caught him in the pasture and put the bit in his mouth—ah me! how well I remember the spicy
clovery smell of his breath!
Sometimes I rose at dawn and stole into the garden while the heavy dew lay on the grass and flowers. Few know what joy it is to feel the roses pressing softly into the hand
or the beautiful motion of the lilies as they sway in the morning breeze. Sometimes I caught an insect in the flower I was plucking
and I felt the faint noise of a pair of wings rubbed together in a sudden terror
as the little creature became aware of a pressure from without.